As you all know - I take my Lois and Clark well mixed.
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“Face my demons?” Clark yelled. “How am I supposed to do that when I don’t even know what they are?”
Jonathan just shook his head. “Oh, son. There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
-o-o-o-
The next day wasn't much of an improvement. Clark was antsy and irritable and when Lois tried to get him to talk about it he just shook his head. He had hardly slept at all after Sunday’s performance and to make matters worse, he had managed to lose the monogrammed silk handkerchief Jason had given him for Father’s Day.
Clark had two more panic attacks – one on the newsroom floor, the other in the elevator. Whatever was bothering him was not getting better with time and he simply refused to talk about it. At least he had filled her in on how he knew Matt Young at the NIA and what happened in Jamaica.
The other positive note of the day was that Young had gotten back with Clark and agreed to talk with them. A less positive note was that research had run a background check on both Hendricks – the man Clark and the NIA had publicly accused of having been gun runner – and Baron Sunday. Prior to the incident where he allegedly died, Hendricks had a clean record. Baron Sunday had no past at all and looked uncannily like an older version of Hendricks. Lois had little doubt that they were the same man.
“I was on my way out,” Young said, meeting them in the lobby of the gray block office building where the NIA had its offices. “Hope you don't mind doin' this on the run…” He turned to Clark. “You've come a long way from that green reporter I met in Jamaica.”
“So have you,” Clark countered. “Head of the Metropolis office? Sorry about Rod Clemens, though.”
Young gave Clark a puzzled look then his expression cleared. “Oh... Rocket Rod Clemens. He was only in my group for a few months, you know. Had some serious personal problems. Seems he could never get the Gulf out of his head.”
“Post traumatic stress?” Lois asked.
“Oh yeah,” Young said. “Just before he shipped stateside, he was caught in the chest by a sniper. Almost killed him.” He gave them another curious look. “Why the interest? The papers said he died of a heart attack.”
“Just an angle we're pursuing,” Lois told him.
“What kind of angle?” Young asked slowly. Suddenly he stiffened and his eyes opened wide in surprised shock.
“Matt? What is it?” Clark asked.
“The dogs!” Young answered, his voice choked in terror.
“There aren't any dogs here, Matt,” Clark said gently.
Young didn’t seem to hear him, backing away from them, a look of utter terror in his eyes. Passersby were stopping to stare. Suddenly, he had a service revolver in his hand.
“Stay back!” Young shouted. Then he started firing. Passersby dove for nearby doorways for protection. Clark had pushed Lois down, out of Young’s way. Young kept pulling the trigger until he was out of ammunition. Then he dropped the gun, putting his hands in front of his face as if to protect himself.
Finally he screamed, clutching at his chest as he dropped to the ground. Lois was on her knees beside him and ripped open his shirt to expose his chest. There were fresh scratch marks on the pale skin.
Clark checked for a pulse at his neck. He pounded once on Young’s chest then began chest compressions. Lois moved around to Young’s head and began breathing for him.
After a moment Clark sat back on his heels. “He's got a pulse.”
People had begun to appear from the doorways. A panda car screeched to a stop beside them. The officer inside threw open the door and ran over to them.
“What the devil just happened, Clark?” Lois demanded as the police and EMTs took over. She hailed a cab to take them back to the office.
“I wish I knew,” Clark said, shaking his head. “First Clemens, he thought he was pinned down by enemy fire, and now Matt?”
“Was Matt afraid of dogs?” Lois asked.
“He told me once he didn’t like them much,” Clark said. “He’d been attacked by a neighbor’s guard dog when he was little.”
“The scratches on his chest could have been from a dog,” Lois noted.
“Like the bump on Jimmy’s head?” Clark asked.
The afternoon didn’t get better. If anything, it was worse. Sunday’s assistant had come running out of the elevators. He looked terrified. “Mr. Kent! I come here to warn you!”
Clark guided the frightened man to a chair.
“The Baron. He wants you…” The man suddenly screamed and fell to the ground. Clark tore open his shirt to expose the man’s chest and started CPR. Lois called 9-1-1.
The EMTs rushed out of the elevators and took over for Clark. They tried the defibrillator – nothing. After several more minutes of working, they sat back shaking their heads.
“I'm Detective Lundren. You're Miss Lane?” the detective that followed the EMTs into the newsroom said. “What do you know about him?”
“His name's Ziggy. He works, or worked, for Baron Sunday, the magician,” Lois said.
“Oh, yes. I’ve got tickets to take my boys to see the show tonight,” Lundren said. The EMTs loaded the body onto a gurney, a sheet covering his face. Lundren lifted the sheet to look at the body.
“Is this a joke?” Lundren asked the EMTs. They both shook their heads.
“How long ago did he die?”
“He collapsed maybe thirty minutes ago,” Lois told him.
“He looks like he's been dead a lot longer than that…” Lundren pulled the sheet back further. Ziggy’s face had shriveled to a parchment covered skull with only a few strands of dark hair.
“This is impossible,” Clark murmured. He had actually gone pale. Lundren shrugged and followed the EMTs out of the newsroom.
“Clark, promise me you won’t go after Sunday alone,” Lois said.
“I wasn’t planning to,” Clark told her. “I’m just trying to figure out how he’s doing it. Clemens autopsy didn’t come up with anything. No drugs or anything like that and nothing’s shown up with Matt either.”
“And whatever it is has been affecting you, too,” Lois reminded him.
“Maybe he really is a black magician,” Clark suggested. “I’ve read about magic and the supernatural. In Jamaica I even interviewed a few bokors and I know they’re nothing like in the movies. But one thing stands out in everything I’ve read, everyone I’ve talked to. Everything you do comes back at you, kind of like Newton’s laws. If you do good, good comes back. If you do evil, that also comes back. Intent is everything.”
“In that case, Sunday should drop dead any time now,” Lois said. “If we’re right, he’s killed three people, maybe more. And he won’t stop when he’s finished with you. He thinks you were involved in taking away his family and hurting them. He wants revenge and he’s tasted blood.”
“Revenge is barren of itself: it is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its end is despair.” Clark quoted. “We have to stop him. I don’t want him coming after you or Jason.”
“I’m going to go pick up Jason from school and then I have an appointment with Doctor Klein over at STAR Labs.” Lois told him. He gave her a worried look. “We’re just talking, so don’t worry about it.”
“Lois, if it was something more, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course I would,” she assured him. “But promise me you won’t do anything stupid. Sunday’s power seems based on fear. I know my demons. I’m a little worried about yours.”
-o-o-o-
“Dad, tell me what I’m supposed to do,” Clark pleaded.
“Son, you know that what ever it is it has no power over you except what you give it. And if it is a memory, it’s something you survived,” Jonathan said. “Sometimes when you shine a light on things, they're not so scary after all.”
He didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to visit that frightening place. His heart started racing and he tried to slow it down. He could feel the fear turning his blood cold. He was trembling but he had to go on. ‘This fear is part of you. It's time to let it out,’ Lois said.
“I'm enclosed in something. There are voices. Colors... red... blue... And loud noise. Like thunder... It's terrifying.”
“But there’s more, isn’t there?” a voice asked. A voice more cultured than Jonathan’s. Jor-El. Jor-El was standing there in his silver-white robes watching him with benign curiosity. “What happened before the thunder, my son?”
“Voices,” Clark answered. “A man and a woman. The woman is crying. The place where they are is coming apart.”
“You will travel far, my little Kal-El. But I will never leave you. Even in the face of my death the richness of my life shall be yours. All that I have learned, everything I feel, all of this and more I have bequeathed to you my son… This is all that I can send with you, Kal-El. And not near so rich a gift as that your mother sends along. Her... love.” Jor-El’s voice.
“It’s you and Mother,” Clark realized. “The city was coming apart. I wasn’t being buried alive. I was being put in the crystal ship that would take me to Earth. I was too young to understand. All I knew was that Mother was gone and I was scared and there was no one there. I was alone.”
Jor-El nodded solemnly.
“Clark, please come back to me. I don’t want to do this alone… Together we’re more powerful than any spell,” Lois was saying. She had taken his hand and placed his palm on her belly. “Hold on to that. Hold on to us.”
“Clark…” Richard was back. “All you have to do is open your eyes. Go back to her.”
“You’re not really a dream, are you?”
Richard smiled. “Sometimes the difference between life and death is nothing more than a dream, a thought.”
“Lois is pregnant…”
Clark opened his eyes to see a hospital room. Lois has standing by the bed and Jason was standing on a chair next to her. He reached up and pulled the respirator tube from his throat.
“Lois…”
“Thank God you’re back,” she said, giving him a hug. “Don’t ever scare me like that.”
“Sorry... Klein gave you good news, didn’t he?”
Lois’s cheeks were wet with tears. “Yes, due date’s middle of May. Klein and I were afraid… It doesn’t matter…We think Hendricks may really be dead this time. His plane crashed outside Chicago. The first reports say one of the bodies on the plane had been dead for many years.”
“His sins finally came back on him?”
She nodded. “You can’t run from your demons.”
“And they’re usually not so scary when you shine a light on them. And together, we’re stronger than all of them. ”
